June 2009: Making food and eating it.

I recently decided that, even for the most hardened vegetable gardening afficionado, all these pictures of fruits and vegetables would have started getting redundant a long time ago. Sure, there is this vague storyline of the garden getting increasingly productive season after season as we see incremental success in our output. But the occasional surprise notwithstanding, you probably got bored several months ago. I figured what this blog needed was a little more cooking to change things up. Maybe you've already noticed a few extra pictures of prepared food in recent posts here and there, but now's time for a full entry dedicated to it.

In previous comments and pictures below, I alluded to a few specific dishes I made with stuff out of the backyard, so I've reserved this entry as a space to show some of those. Here are the first potatoes I cooked/mashed, w/ no seasoning and only a sliver of butter . . . delicious:
And here is the cole slaw I made . . . I made two batches, both with my cabbage, but only one had my carrots -- the other was w/ carrots from the market. I think this batch was with my carrots though, along with some parsley from the herb bed. I also used apple cider vinegar and whipping cream.As my wife likes to remind me, I'm not a food photographer. To her credit, I often worry about just how appetizing some of my pictures look, and I'm convinced many of the captions convey a "Just had to be there" spirit. I've got to learn how to take better food photography and make some of this stuff look at least vaguely appetizing. Generally speaking, it doesn't taste half-bad. Nonetheless, sometimes I try different angles and different lighting, uncertain as to whether it helps at all.

Here's a soup, or maybe since it dried out too much to be soup, I should call it a stew inspired by a soup I had at Cakes and Ale in Atlanta (Decatur). Last winter I ate there w/ a co-worker and I had their black radish soup. I think it might have had cheese in it, but regardless, it was great. In fact, not only did it inspire me to make this dish, it inspired me to plant black radishes in the backyard in the first place. In this case, I added cheddar and fennel from garden.

And then more of the same with some of my corn,squash, and shallots. Again, I really not sure these dishes look all that appealing in a photo, but use your gustatory imaginations.

Going for baroque: a salad I made with several different media from the backyard: carrots, cucumber, lettuce, and two types of beets.

And then there's some peach salsa I made. Our red onions, tomatoes (that I can't remember whether they're from our plants or from the market), and peaches that I bought at the market, but they're peaches from a family that farms about 10 miles from my hometown and brings the produce to market in Austin.

I sauteed some of our peas and chopped rutabagas along with garlic, and maybe a shallot or two. At first I really enjoyed rutabagas, but I'm really tired of them after a couple seasons. I think we need to take a break on it for a while.

A variation on hoppin john with tomatoes, summer peas, and peppers from the garden and market:

This summer has also been a good time for making new kinds of drinks. In addition to my first forays into the fascinating world of michelada, angostura bitters, and aguas frescas, here's something more straightforward: gin & tonic with cucumbers and lavendar from the garden.